Being smart and hard working isn’t enough

I met with a friend the other day. He is a super smart, hard-working guy, and he is going out on his own and starting his own business. Whether you call it consulting or fractional work depends on the words you want to use, but that is where he will end up.

It is a scary move if you have worked for corporate America forever. He thought about it, talked with his wife, and said, “I’m smart, I’m hard working, things always work out. We’ll make it work and land on our feet.”

I am sure he will.

Still, there is a flag waving in the back of my mind. I really want being smart and hard working to be enough to make it. In my experience, I am not convinced it is.

It takes you a very long way. It does not automatically mean success. There is another piece, call it luck or providence or whatever you want, that you do not directly control.

The odds for anyone starting out are real, too. Bureau of Labor Statistics data on new private sector businesses with employees shows that of those opened in the year ended March 2024, 77.9 percent were still operating a year later. Of those opened in the year ended March 2020, 51.4 percent were still around five years later. Those are businesses with employees, not solo practices, but the pattern is hard toThose are businesses with employees, not solo practices, but the pattern is hard to ignore.

You do still have some control. People who perform at a high level, and I am thinking of athletes, will tell you that to get lucky you have to be very good and work very hard. That is how you end up in the right place at the right time, ready to take full advantage when luck shows up.

If you are not ready, or you are lazy, or you are not quick enough, then even when lightning strikes you cannot take advantage of it.

Researchers have tried to put numbers on this. In a 2018 paper in Advances in Complex Systems, Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda built a simple model of 1,000 simulated careers over 40 years, with talent spread the way it is in real life and luck arriving as random events. A lucky break only paid off if the person could take advantage of it, and more talent made that more likely. Even so, the most successful people in the model were almost never the most talented. They were usually close to average and luckier than everyone else. The authors’ advice for individuals is to broaden what you do and stay in contact with other people, because that exposes you to more lucky breaks. That sounds a lot like networking to me.

So this is partly not upbeat, and partly a reminder that if you put in the work, you can get lucky. I really wish being smart and hard working was enough. I am not convinced it is. If you are going out on your own and want help building a network that sends you referrals, book a networking chat.